Former Ontario AG wants Safe Streets Act repealed

Former attorney general Michael Bryant wants the Ontario government to repeal the Safe Streets Act which targets panhandlers and squeegee kids.

Bryant says thousands of tickets are handed out each year to people only because they are poor, mentally ill or addicted. He argues the wealthy, middle-class and charities are never ticketed for fundraising on the streets.

He says it’s time for the government to scrap a “rotten law” that criminalizes the poor.

“Today there aren’t squeegee kids, and yet thousands upon thousands of people are being ticketed. Not for squeegeeing, and the vast majority of whom are being ticketed, not even for aggressive panhandling.”

15,000 tickets were issued in Toronto alone in 2010, even though there are far fewer people panhandling or raising money by washing windshields. A 2011 study by the University of Guelph and York University also called for an end to the Safe Streets Act, saying that ticketing the homeless criminalizes poverty.